Belfords Annual 1888 89 by Handford Thomas Donn Piatt (1 results)

TRUE Williams, H.N. Cady, Arthur Vaughan, Charles M Bowles, et al. (illustrator). FIRST. FAIR+. Fully decorated boards, spine weakening, board separation starting. This very rare children's publication - content done in the illustrated style of Harpers, but here, by the Canadian/American publishing house of Belford (various corporate names), ties together some of the best loved illustrators/artists of the age with literary connections to one of the giants of the age, Mark Twain, and events as monumental as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. --- Belford, Clarke & Co., Chicago, 1875-1892. Canadian Alexander Belford started "Belford's Magazine" in 1873. He used a new marketing concept of selling "cheap twelvemos.", placing displays in general stores & others to compete with books-only stores. Even selling through temporary stores to unload inventory in a technique called 'hippodroming'. They also marketed by announcing (artificially) impending price increases to push sales 'before looming deadlines'. The company was embroiled in constant law suits and their Chicago plant was razed by fire in 1886. But that didn't stop Belford. He contracted with the Encyclopedia Britannica to promote a reduced price American version of the famous British work that made it a success in the States. In the meantime, Mark Twain constantly sued the company for using his personal illustrator True Williams in their publications. But the wiley entrpreneur always seemed to escape culpability. Williams is prominent in this current offering of Belford's Annual 1888-89. Additionally, Belford had a knack for bringing important people onboard his staff. Colonel Donn Piatt served as an editor in 1888. Piatt was renowned for being a Union officer who devised the formation in Maryland of a full regiment manned "solely by slaves". The legal effect was to at once emancipate every slave in Maryland - BEFORE Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was made political currency. It caused a wave of slaves to enlist for service and turned Maryland "Free". The book for sale here includes articles by Theodore Roosevelt, Gen. Lew Wallace, and other notables. Art contributors included True Williams, N.H Cady, Arthur Vaughn, Charles. M Bowles, among others. An extraordinary surviving memento of 19th century publishing and personalities. [B87-43].